Friday, February 09, 2007

What agents do on the weekend

I'm sure someone out there is interested in this topic--consider it part of my ongoing campaign to help people understand that agents are human, and that we try to cram a lot into each week, due to the workload. =)

So what do I plan to do for this upcoming weekend (and more importantly, will I actually accomplish all of this)?

Read manuscripts

Finish reading the February Locus

Catch up on my back issues of Lucky (two months behind now)

Read partials, to finish the statistical count

Buy a shelving unit

Do laundry

Buy baby clothes for the cat

Furiously attempt to knit a baby hat for a friend's baby who is threatening to arrive two months early (if only babies would stick to their due dates! =)

Watch the anime for my anime column

Dress the cat up

Start writing my anime column, as it's due next week

Read more manuscripts

Introduce the cat to the wonders of bathing, as well as trim her claws (what fun!)

Stare at my messy house in dismay and then attempt to clean part of a room

Watch "Brokeback Mountain", so it can go back to Netflix

Fill out my Hugo nomination ballot, hopefully

Attempt to start planning wedding

And I'm sort of planning to work sleeping, eating, and visiting my mom in there too. February is the one month this year where I currently have no conferences and I intend to enjoy my weekends off. =)

(Horribly informative post, isn't it? Chockful of interesting content, I know. And trust me, I know there are people with far busier lives than mine, but while I'm not traveling to conferences, this is a nice "off" weekend to have.)

We're dressing up the cat as a trial run before she gets spayed on the 22nd. We have the feeling, just this gut intuition, that she's not going to want to wear a cone, and that she's going to be one of those cats who are prone to rip out their stitches. So what the vet should we do is buy inexpensive baby onesies, and basically dress her in them, so she won't be able to get at the stitches. We figure that if we try to get her used to wearing something beforehand (and remember, this is the cat who we still can't get to wear her collar...the last time, she got out of it 15 minutes flat), then we may have an easier time taking care of her after the surgery.

The bath is for a similar reason, actually. She does need her claws trimmed, but she's not overly dirty enough to really, really need a bath. But we figure that if we ever need to give her a bath when she's older, it will be much better to have first exposed her to the experience as a kitten.

Don, my cats occassionally get baths also. Can't be the only ones, look at all the hilarious photos of cats wet from baths.

Jenny, trick to bathing cats, takes two the first time, and hang on to those front feet! IF you can get a cat used to it, they do get resigned and just sit there pouting. Never had to collar our cats when spayed, lucky there. They left the stitches alone.

How I wish I could see your cat wearing a onesie. Will you snap it or leave it unsnapped for easy litter-box access?!!! (LOL)

We actually used to "dress" the family cat when I was a kid--mostly putting little kerchiefs around his head and pretending he was any number of foreign characters onto which we would project faux accents. The poor creature was so tolerant of us. (And why didn't we have anything better to do???)

My current cat is also a tolerant creature, but I think he would draw the line at donning actual garb. Then again, he will stand for my children blowing into his ear for at least a minute before getting up and lumbering off, so who knows? We might find a use for those old Barbie outfits yet.

Does your cat go outside? If not, you don't need to bother with a collar. None of my cats have ever worn a collar.

As for dressing the cat... I dunno. I understand why you want to try to get the cat used to it in advance, but please don't do it to her unless she is actually picking at her stitches. (I was obviously very lucky. My first cat (the only female) was the most well-behaved cat in the world and didn't touch her stitches.)

As for bathing the cat... Again, unless you cat goes outside, you'll probably never need to bathe her. But if you do, the trick is to (a) wear long sleeves, and (b) plop the cat in the tub with no mat so she can't get a grip. If your tub has doors instead of a curtain, you can try tossing her in and closing the door very quickly. Give her a few minutes to calm down and then the bathing goes quickly.

Contrary to legend, cats don't actually hate water. They just hate the transition between dry and wet.

E, she doesn't go outside, but we live in a townhouse development with sufficient car traffic in it that we're worried about what might happen, if she one day decides to bolt out the front door. And then, god forbid this happens, at least she'll have her collar and ID tags on, so someone can try and help find her. It's also why she's getting a microchip put in, at the same time she gets spayed; extra-security measure. =)

As for bathing, I don't think she's ever gotten a bath in her life, but I see no hurt in her being clean. Our bathtub needs to be repaired (broken faucet at the moment), so she's getting tossed in the shower stall with glass doors that she normally likes to play in, and will hopefully get used to the water coming gently down on her. And then one of us is going to be brave enough to go in and shampoo her; most likely me, I suspect. But I'm damn well wearing clothes with long sleeves and pants into the shower... I know that I'm going to get wet anyway, and I prefer to try and remain unscratched. Plus, lately Zoe has been grooming her front paws under running water from the sink, so I have a mild hope that the bath will not be quite the traumatizing experience that it could be.

Ben, your weekend sounds exactly like the one that Chris has planned... all video games, all the time. =)

As don says, cats clean themselves. They dedicate hours to it. Unless your cat gets something toxic on their coat, like paint, or there's a veterinary reason to give them a bath, it's best to leave them to it.

I give my cats baths every couple of weeks. They're "clean" from their own bathing, but their saliva leaves a deposit on the hair that is what people with cat allergies are allergic to. I also give them a wipe-down every couple days with a warm wet washcloth.

The trick to bathing a cat is to clip the claws *first*. Especially if your cat is anything like my Tildrum (the one that looks just like her), then you want to take as many precautions as possible!

But don't just give her a bath once--you'll have to do it at some sort of interval for it to sink in for her.

Well Jenny, you should get Chris to visit our site at PSX Extreme every once in a while. Have him pop in and introduce himself on the boards. :) Heck, if he's ever a frequent visitor at places like GameSpot, I might even know him....

Except that they live over in Battleground State Park, which is where the Battle of Monmouth took place during the Revolutionary War. It's literally five minutes from my house.

The local running club meets there every week during the summer, to run 5Ks together, since there's a great trail that goes through the woods--the whole first mile is on sand and it's awesome to run (aaah, the days when I used to be in shape). Except, now that the bears are in the park, they've changed the entire trail for the 5K, to avoid them, and they no longer really go near the woods or the sand area. So sad.

The biggest animals we've seen in our little townhouse development have been a deer, once, and also, once, a racoon. Over by where my parents live, which has houses set on more land, there's a whole herd of deer that live in their neighborhood. One of them has adopted my parents backyard, as his favorite resting spot. =)